Gun Sales Soar In Aftermath Of Newtown Killings

As so often happens when dealing with the fickle public, the aftermath of the news of the second worst school massacre in US history has led to precisely the opposite outcome to the one desired by the media and at least part of the general population. Because in the backlash for gun control at its tamest, and against weapon ownership of any kind at its most rabid, driven primarily by those who don't own weapons, everyone else decided to think one step ahead and preempt what may soon be yet another governmental subjugation of a constitutional amendment. The result? An absolute surge in weapon sales in the days following last Friday's tragedy.

Karl Durkheimer is more coy than might be expected of a man with a pistol on his hip.

Durkheimer's gun shop looks to have enjoyed record sales of semi-automatics – "modern sporting rifles", as he calls them – and handguns at the weekend. But he doesn't want to talk specific numbers.

Nor is he terribly keen to speculate on the causes of the sudden demand. But he acknowledges that it probably has everything to do with a man killing two people with an assault rifle last week in a Portland shopping mall less than 10 minutes drive away, and Friday's massacre of 20 small children and seven adults on the other side of the country in Connecticut.

"Handgun sales are up substantially and modern sporting rifles are up astronomically," he said after a few days when his shop, Northwest Armory, was packed with buyers sizing up the most popular pistol in the US, the Glock, and the military-style AR-15 assault rifle, which also comes with a pink stock for women. "The people you see are twofold. There are first-time buyers who are in fear of what the future will bring. But most of what you saw is people hedging their bets that there might be a political policy put forward by the liberal side of the government."

Durkheimer means his shoppers fear that the shock of the Newtown, Connecticut, killings might cause the public and Congress to support a reinstatement of the ban on some of his most popular lines.

That's a picture replicated across the US from California to Louisiana, and even in Newtown where Robert Caselnova said his gun shop saw high demand for assault rifles in the days after the killings. The nationwide increase in sales was reflected in longer than usual delays for legally required background checks which in some cases took hours rather than minutes.

The surge in sales is not unusual. Following a mass killing at a Colorado cinema in July, applications to buy guns rose more than 40% in a week. The murder two years ago of six people during an assassination attempt against congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was badly wounded, prompted a 60% increase in gun sales in a single day in Arizona.

And while we have been following the slow and steady rise in gun sales, punctuated by two key events which have sent gun sales soaring, namely the Obama election and reelection, the pick up in sales seen last weekend is unprecedented. And to confirm fears that whether by way of the Second Amendment or not, various chains may halt gun sales, earlier today we got confirmation from Dick's Sporting Goods that they have suspended sales of rifles nationwide:

Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. (DKS), the largest U.S. sporting-goods chain, has suspended sales of modern sporting rifles in the wake of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, as the community mourns victims of the massacre.

Sales of all guns have been stopped at its store closest to the shooting, the Coraopolis, Pennsylvania-based company said today in an e-mailed statement.

Dick’s is pulling the products after 26 people -- mostly children -- were killed during a Dec. 14 shooting rampage at an elementary school in Newtown. The chain, which has more than 500 stores in the U.S., sells guns and ammunition in stores and not online, according to its website.

“We are extremely saddened by the unspeakable tragedy that occurred last week,” the company said in the statement. Dick’s is removing the guns “out of respect for the victims and their families.”

Noble gesture, to be sure, but all it is really doing is leading to even greater sales at all other gun retailer outlets. And indeed, as fears that more and more companies may halt sales, the scramble to weaponize themselves, will keep Americans busy for days and weeks to come.

On the question of how gun owners see last Friday's tragedy, the Guardian had this to add:

The buyers regard the Newtown killings as a tragedy, but view any connection to their right to own weapons as a political ploy aimed at depriving them of their guns.

"It's terrible what happened. It's just plain evil," said Richard Merritt on the steps of the gun shop after browsing assault rifles with a thought to buying himself one for Christmas to supplement the handguns and hunting rifle he owns.

"But there's people trying to use that to say I'm responsible because I own a gun. Where's the connection? The only people making one are doing it for political ends because there's not one of these massacres would ever have been stopped by a law that takes my gun away. But now they're talking about doing that again, I think this may be the time to buy."

Durkheimer is sick of gun owners being painted as the problem. Like many, he feels demonised and vilified for the crimes of a few because he enjoys hunting and shooting ranges. That puts him on the defensive when groups campaigning for tightened gun regulation might be better off trying to win him over with assurances that their calls to restrict the sale of assault rifles and magazines that hold large numbers of bullets won't end with the confiscation of handguns and hunting rifles.

"It's just another thing that will drive a wedge between us. Instead of the United States being a melting pot it's more polarised," he said.

Well, class warfare in the US is nothing new. And of course, what is most ironic, is that it is precisely the fear of forced, unilateral rejection, by either or all three branches of government, of the original constitution and its various amendments that has Americans scrambling into gun stores. And thus the closed loop nature of the problem: by threatening to take away America's guns, the government is only exacerbating a problem that is steeped in 200+ years of history and is engrained deep in American psychology.

What is the solution?

We don't know, but we do know that the government stepping in confident it can and will fix and regulate everything is precisely what will only make the problem far, far worse.

We do know that heart of the problem is far, far deeper than one or more tragic mass shootings can reveal. In fact the full extent of the problem begins to be unmasked courtesy of the chart we showed yesterday, and which was to be found, ironically enough, in the most recent Smith and Wesson investor presentation.

I live in Oregon...This story should have BEEN FRONT PAGE. The media does not want you to see this. This story was kept off the air. Very Interesting. The gun grabbers don't want you seeing anything good about weapons....

In KronyKomradeAmerika, Cerebus divests out of incredibly profitably lines of business to go on Uncle Sugar's mammary gland.

Here's what we've been told, in the wake of an objective (and subjective) tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School:

1) The culprit was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, which falls under the category of an autism spectrum disorder via the DSM-IV.

2) The culprit was anti-social and was inclined towards non-empathy, according to former classmates and others who knew him and/or grew up with him.

3) It has been reported by several "anonymous" law enforcement sources that the culprit had a history of legal troubles, but this is unconfirmed as any record pre the age of 18 or 17 would have been sealed per juvenile status.

4) The culprit used firearms, including the primary rifle that he used to murder nearly all of his victims, that he stole from his mother, in furtherance of his sick crimes. The culprit never purchased any firearms in his name, or at all, and therefore never underwent federal or state background checks, nor was he screened or approved for a permit to own or carry any firearms.

5) There are an estimated 300 million firearms of all types, from shotguns to pistols to so-called "black" or "assault" rifles, in the lawful ownership and custody of an approximate 50 million American Civilians, 99.99% of whom never violate the law, let alone harm anyone (with without use of a firearm). Think about that; An incredibly small fraction of a fraction of a percent of owners of fireamrs ever threaten, let alone harm any other person during their lifetime.

Yet, here are anti-RTKBA politicians and an incredibly biased Main Stream Media, in the immediate aftermath of a genuine tragedy, exploiting it by using illogical & specious arguments, irrelevant information and dis-information, and empty rhetoric that is purely calculated to foment public support for their true agenda, which is to chip away at the foundation of a critical element of the 2nd Amendment, and in ways that would not have prevented the Sandy Hook tragedy, I might add.

Senators Feinstein & Schumer, along with Mayor Bloomberg & President Obama have absolutely no intellectual honesty on this subject, and the Main Stream Media yet again shows why it's an institutional failure of the highest order (it does not educate its readers/viewers/listeners, as a cornerstone institution of a true democracy dependent of an electoral process would do, but it spreads misinformation, half-truths and propaganda).

While the anti-RTKBA agenda crowd will renew their dogmatic, irrational push to try and legislate away the right to purchase magazines holding more than 10 cartridges of ammunition, they will never want an honest debate on the efficacy of such a piece of legislation, since:

I'm quite confident that nearly all the homicides that were perpetrated this weekend in Chicago, land of some of the most restrictive firearm ownership laws -- yet land of an abnormally high homicide rate-- were done so using "low capacity" handguns and revolvers.

I like my 75 round drums in a more manly caliber-7.62x39(when you absolutely positvely have to kill every MFer in the room-accept no substitute). typical AR buyer-pay 2X as much for stuff like mags on a battle rifle that is 1/2 as good as an AK

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force.

Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

ZH has never, ever criticised the BIS, possibly never criticised wealthy elites and mafia, it has rarely criticised the UN, and has sometimes criticised the IMF and World Bank. ZH focuses mainly on Governments and the Banking System, but especially individuals. This is like blaming the puppets for a bad performance.

Remember when ZH was attacking Goldman ever single day? Now what, besties?

I read over and over for the first two days that the gunman had two pistols with him in the school and the Bushmaster was found in the trunk of his car. Now every article about this says that he killed all the kids with the Bushmaster. What??

Also, what happened to the 2nd possible shooter who was found in the woods next to the school? I read about that over and over on the first day. Am I the only one that notices this shit?

Perhaps it's a Hegelian Dialectic solution to the problem of disarming the US public of semi-auto assault rifles (High velocity rounds).

Semi-auto AR's are more dangerous than machine guns as they are light, very accurate, somewhat compact, and you can pack lots of rounds into tight containers (mags) which can then be stored in vests. Machine Guns tend to be larger, heavier, deliberately inaccurate, ammo requires bags, and you can easily stop sales of link.

Oops, did I just step on another raw nerve...well fuck me, those pesky little things are everywhere. Nothing like trying to navigate the ZeroHedge minefield of political correctness while pointing out the fucking obvious.

But nobody has to worry, I'm sure everyone will remain calm and orderly when the lights go out and the food lines snake through the Burbs.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society.

As the carrion eaters like Schumer, Feinstein, and Bloomberg eagerly flock to tragedies like this, keep in mind that their ban plan applies only to you, not to their own well armed bodyguards/goon squads.

How about naming some gun-grabbing Stalinist kleptos who AREN'T Jewish? This is rank anti-semitism. One might almost think the Jews want to disarm Whites and middle-class people in Amerikwa so they can massacre them. As in Soviet Russia, Cambodia, China, North Korea and other Judeo-Bolshevik "gun free zones".

There are so many people here smarter than I, I wouldn't and couldn't.

I wouldn't mind being nominated & appointed as the Chairman of the Non-Federal Reserve-less Non-Bank, however, so I could take a giant, steaming dump on it.

I would also do my best, after sabotaging & destroying the Non-Fed Reserve-less Non-Bank from within, to get the U.S. back on an actual U.S. Dollar standard, backed by something-- anything of inherent value -- also, where.....gasp!....the average person would see their PURCHASING POWER RISE...RISE....RISE!!!

I ave a 308 Winchester bolt action that hold three rounds. I have always figured that if I can't bring down a buck with three shots, I don't deserve to have it. I can't imagine any one would need a larger magazine capacity, unless you're some scumbag after children or other innocents.

Ya right bozo. You and the other silly assholes who fantasize about standing up to the enormous power of the U.S. government with rifles and shotguns. Like you're going to stand up to the 82ed Airborne Division and the 1st Armored Division. This is nothing more than a moronic fantasy. The time when U.S. citizens can successfully resist the government by force has long past. Get real

There are 310 million people in the USA. One person used a weapon to kill 26 people.

In other words: 1/310,000,000,000 of the population did something horrible with a gun and suddenly we have to pass EVEN MOAR! gun control laws that affect 309,999,999,999/310,000,000,000 of the population?

How fucking stupid is that? One statistically INSIGNIFICANT event occurs and suddenly the whole fucking world has to change?

Notice also the MSM's careful characterization that the firearms Adam Lanza used were "legally registered" to his mother. That means he did not access the weapons lawfully (they were not registered to him). And once he disposed of his mother, his status was that of murderer.

So the accurate description of the lunatic who shot up the kids, at the time of his entry into the school, was that of a murderer who had seized weapons unlawfully.

Yep, it was intentionally skewed from the beginning by The Main & Very Lame Main Stream Proxy of Propaganda.

An accurate headline would have been along the lines of "[D]evelopmentally Disabled*, Firearm & Black Ops Video Game Obsessed Sociopath Kills Own Mother, Steals Firearms & Goes on Horrific Killing Spree."

*I use the term "developmentally disabled" because that's how the culprits own brother reportedly referred to him.

p.s. - Who here wants to debate whether a 12 gauge shotgun would be nearly as lethal, IF NOT MORE SO, in the unfortunate, grim statistical bracket of fatalities, if something such as a Mossberg 590 were used instead of an "evil, black, semiautomatic assault" rifle, under similar circumstances?

This is a stupid argument. In a country where guns are trivial to access, crazy people like him ARE going to get their hands on war weapons.

No, your statement is stupid, NO WAR weapons are allowed into the public arena, unless they are fully Background checked, and pay $200.00 per weapon, TAX.And paperwork follows it to the grave, or thext LEGAL transfer.